Nesting boxes made from removable dish bins?

[Compost King]

you can get those plastic dish bins for at Dollar Tree... and I feel so stupid for not even thinking of using them for that. I use their mixing bowls with handles as my feed scoops. their measuring cups work great as smaller feed scoops ... and you can measure the feed as well!

 

[gtaus]

I have been using plastic dish bins for 3 years. I only have 2 nest boxes since I can only have 6 chickens per our city ordinance. I fill bottom with fine pine shavings from Tractor Supply Co. Very easy to clean and disinfect if needed. In fact I usually just dump the shavings when it looks bad or someone pooped in it. I do put a generous amount in about 3-4 inches. With less I did have some issues with eggs breaking and Someone eating them. Good luck. I go for cheap anytime I can.

Welcome to the BYC forum. Thanks for your feedback on the dish bins as nest boxes.

I, too, go for cheap anytime I can but the big selling point on the dish bins for me was the ease in cleaning. My dish bins are only 4 1/2 inches tall, so do you really need 3-4 inches of pine shavings? I was thinking maybe 2 inches (half the bin height) would be plenty.

 

[gtaus]

you can get those plastic dish bins for at Dollar Tree... and I feel so stupid for not even thinking of using them for that.

I think I first saw this concept on a YouTube video, and immediately thought this was what I wanted to try. I am not very creative in thinking, but can usually see the benefit of a good idea someone else has thought about or put into use.

I got a nice little black wire basket for collecting eggs from the Dollar Tree. Should be plenty big enough to collect daily eggs from my 10 hens when they start laying.

I have repurposed gallon and half gallon plastic jugs to make feed scoops and funnels. They work good enough and if/when they finally break, they are easily replaced.

I bought a black round plastic oil pan at the Dollar Tree to use a feed pan. Works great but I did break down and buy some real rubber livestock pans because they will survive the winter freeze whereas the plastic pans will not.

But the Dollar Tree dish bins for nesting boxes was just another fortunate find for me and I think it will work out well.

 

[aart]

My dish bins are only 4 1/2 inches tall, so do you really need 3-4 inches of pine shavings? I was thinking maybe 2 inches (half the bin height) would be plenty.

Might be fine, observe and adjust.
The depth may not be deep enough to deter them from scratching bedding out of bin.
They stand up almost fully when the egg actually emerges so what's around the bin might come into play.

 

[gtaus]

I have used the plastic dish bins for a while now, work great, the girls seem to be OK with them.

Thanks for the feedback. I bought the bins and will be building the nest box frame soon.

 

[aart]

OK, not seeing an anti-tip bar...but glad you tested it.

 

[aart]

Yeah, the anti-tip bar is there but hard to see if you don't know it's there. Tested fine.

Must be tucked under the lip of bin in these pics.....maybe other pics later showing it?

 

[gtaus]

Must be tucked under the lip of bin in these pics.....maybe other pics later showing it?

Oh, I see the problem. There is no anti-tip bar under the lip of the front of the bin. I put strips of wood underneath the bins in both the front and back. Kind of like a floor, but only a few strips and not a complete floor. When I tested it out with my hands, the front and back strips of wood under the bins stopped any tipping. My bins are suspended only 1/8 inch above those bottom strips, so any weight from above in the bins brings the bin down on top of the anti-tip strips.

My chicks will not be laying for another few months, so I took the bins out. Since there is no real floor in the nest box enclosure, they cannot get in there and sleep, poo, etc... and make a mess. At best, they could only use the strips as a roost, but I have other roosts in the coop that are both better and higher. So I hope the chicks don't start roosting inside the nest box enclosure. But if they do, it's still a roost type strip and the poo would fall through to the deep litter bedding below. So it's all good, I hope.

 

[gtaus]

I originally bought cheap kitty litter pans to do this with, but my boyfriend opted to buy nesting boxes instead of building...I may keep them for the duck house.

I don't have cats, but I do have some kitty litter pans which I find useful for lots of things. The kitty litter pans I have are only about half as deep as the plastic dish bins I intend to use as nest boxes, so I think the bins will be better.

I considered buying premade nesting boxes, but at $20 each for a plastic shell that gets screwed into the wall, I could not see the advantage of the premade box over making a removable nest box with the plastic dish bins. Well, I guess it's easier to just screw in the plastic premade nest box to the wall, and easy to relocate later if you want. So maybe your boyfriend thought that was a better solution for your coop.

I bought some nice rubber feeding pans for my chickens, but you could use the kitty litter pans as feeding pans. When I feed kitchen scraps to the chicks, I always put them in my feeding pan. What the chickens don't eat from the feeding pan, I carry out to the compost bin the next day. Much easier than trying to clean up the scraps from the ground. I don't want to leave rotting food around the coop/run to attract predators like skunks and raccoons. So confining the scraps to the feeding pans make my life easier.

 

[gtaus]

I use them and love how easy they are to clean. I should have thought about using them years ago.

Dish pans on left in soda box nesting shelves. The right has my Goodwill finds.

Love the pic. It's just that easy I guess. Thanks for sharing your experience. I am more convinced I'm on the right path here in using dish bins as nest boxes.